Maus, My Thesis

My thesis for the upcoming essay will be a bit muddled or maybe clear as day. My thesis will be something like this "Maus effectively argues the impossibility of commemorating such an event as the holocaust. I come up with this theory from the analytic readings we did in class, which i was late to arrive! But i do see the holocaust being almost impossible to accurately place under one such "transcendental" story. We can never do this as there are so many stories, emotions, and lives that happened throughout this time that we would never be able to construct one large story to fit all of these. As such it puts a satire on all history books, monuments and museums of the holocaust. Art Spiegelman shows this in almost every page of his comic book. From cover to cover the art work shows the mass people that were effected. He shows it through irony and satire. I would obvioously bring in writing of some of the philosophers in the Post Modern For Beginners book, that have critiqued the insufficency of history books and the likes. These sources would be the most pertinent to the essay that i would be writing. The difficulty i would have would be most likely quoting the text without summarizing the actual comic "scene". I might use some of the excerpts in Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud that Mr. D gave us from this i will bring in the section that he gave us about the different faces and different "titles" that these comics take. McCloud's theory or statement possibly on the icons that we give to such things can also be placved into my essay the most obvious of which is the Mouse head on each of the jewish people. All of this will be anaylized and hopefully become to be the best essay yet to come.

Are we really that lazy?

Three days and four teeth later I bring to you people my blog! I was not their for Mr. D to present the ideas we are suppose to focus or zoom on in this blog so as usual it will be a vast amount of random crap that no one should really be allowed to read. As Nicholas Carr states in his “Is Google Making Us Stupid” article we are changing in our reading habits. I remember reading books before I would ever pick up the remote and now today we pick up the mouse rather than become deeply immersed in a book. Becoming deeply immersed in anything seems ridiculously hard today, with the Internet giving us the vital needs of whatever we need we just skim for the hearty chunks and leave the rest behind! On my blog page I have had a survey going and so far the majority of people who have voted picked the “I skim” option! This pick and choose, Carr states seems to be derived from the internet because the information is so easily accessible it does not seem necessary to even read the whole article. Why read the book when spark notes gives you the gist of it? Even Cat’s Cradle is attempting to attack television , the media giant of his time, with short passages to keep the attention of the reader. Maybe in newer texts we will have to shorten that even further, sentences will become nothing but short hand. Carr continues his thought when he dives into artificial intelligence, as he states “The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive” With Google attempting to create an artificial intelligence that is literally smarter than the human brain as so to “serve” the human better, basically this relates to the human into instant gratification of information as so we don’t have to add that much more of a word so the computer will think for us so we have to do nothing we have become so lazy that thinking is too difficult for us to do! Sorry for the terrible grammar again 

PseudoModernism: the good, the bad, the ugly

My past guess was completely wrong we did not have a socratic circle, well beside the point on to the blog of this week. We have been exploring the reaches of Postmodernism in class both through PostModernism for beginerrs and applying it to Cat's Cradle. Now that we have read a thick portion of the book and began thinking as postmodern thinkers Mr. Dominguez has thrown another unseen hurdle at us, one of PseudoModernism. After reading Dr. Kirby's article I see our world has not become Postmodernistic but actually switched into a consumeristic society. This pseudomodernism is "is no more than a technologically motivated shift to the cultural centre of something which has always existed (similarly, metafiction has always existed, but was never so fetishised as it was by postmodernism). " Had this Pseudomodernism started as soon as the industrial revolution, possibly even before the postmodern thinkers had written the first inkling of their theories? Pseudomodernism today seems to be everywhere today, from television, to school, used by politicians and religion. Pseudomodernism is basically the idea that with this new technology that is all directed towards the consumer, or the buyer as it may. Because of this emphasis on the individual it would seem that the idea of metanarratives would completely diminish but actually it seems a more Changed metanarrative has been created. It might seem that metanarratives are diminishing but is this pseudomodernism actually affecting as much as we think it may? The Hybrid movement this movement and "culture" or idea or object to buy was spearheaded by the minority not necesarrily by what the consumer wanted, but in a different thought is higher mile per gallon rating what the consumer wanted? As Dr. Kirby says " dance music is to be danced to, porn is not to be read or watched but used, in a way which generates the pseudo-modern illusion of participation. In music, the pseudo-modern supersedingof the artist-dominated album as monolithic text by the downloading and mix-and-matching of individual tracks on to an iPod, selected by the listener, was certainly prefigured by the music fan’s creation of compilation tapes a generation ago. " All of this interaction, is seen sort of in the iPhone, it is all touch screen a sudden desire to be touching and be interactive with the technology has spurred, another example the Wii. Music is now not for the artist but for the listener, as Kirby has started music that is pumped out now a days seems to be massproduced and pumped out as fast and easily as possible music is remixed and sold in billion. In the 1990s the electronica movement was becoming large with huge events springing up all around the world, electronic artist would create albums that would flow from one song to another a popular artist would be Tiëto, now this Tiëto has changed in his brand new cd you see a mass variety of artist from mainstream Nelly Furtado to Sigurros a indie artist, this arrangement of artists and sounds are all to hit the listener and have them buy a piece of music that is no longer an "inspiration" but more of how can we sell the product? Dr. Kirby says "The world has narrowed intellectually, not broadened" i do disagree on his statement, with this new technology, as Mr. Dominguez has said we can never have a objective history book, i feel as if we are now trying and are closer than ever to have everyone's story played through. In one event alone you can have four hundred people spectating and now with current technology we can have 400 youtube video, blogs, texts, phone calls, or tweets about that one event showing that single persons perspective and story. This knowledge spread easily at a blink of an eye and now accessable within your own pockets. So i will end this blog with, im sorry if you read all of that, it is very very random and spurts of thought at certain times, mainly just word vomit :)

Kitten's Nest

This blog is of a desperate nature, something that needs to be finished that was never completed in general! So I am guessing we are starting this Tuesday of with a Socratic circle just for the matter of repetition. "Living by the foma(harmless untruths" that make you brave and kind, and healthy, and happy." The Books of Bokonon I:5. From the beginning to the end of this exact quote postmodernism is plastered on quite thickly. The twist of Vonnegut "book of bokonon" is the relationship to the bible, this is a mirror of what his quotation just has said. In all simplicity it would be the fact that people or human beings as a whole should be accepting of others beliefs if these beliefs are what give us meaning in life. Or a goal to lead us toward there is nothing another human being should express to repress the other individual in their own pursuit of happiness. These harmless untruth's can be symbolized as anything from religion to nationalism. The book progress from this one mere statement to the story of Felix, the pure scientist. Felix represent the view of the age of reason or in some sense, the scientific method. Felix is pure science which as Mr. Dominguez has said science for simply science sake. To seek knowledge for no other reason but for knowledge. This pursuit eventually leads us into dangerous territories. As we ask questions science usually will produce more questions these questions may lead us in either way as the "lack of moral" scientist see no wrong but let their mind's wander unguided towards whatever direction they feel. The concept that is previously brought up with karass and the fact that we eventually are tied to people within this world through different means has quite perplexed me. We can relate karass in sorts to Brave New World, in Brave New World Linda was in this alternative culture but actually connected to the Director of the Brave New World through a past time all of these Karass's were connected when Bernard Marx brought Linda and John the savage back to the Brave New World letting them all connect. Something that can relate to this would be the tragic accident that happened during 9/11. No matter if you were directly related to some one in the towers it effected widely all the citizens of United States. This may have effected the citizen in the sadness or the wrongful persecution of innocent middle eastern citizens who were terrorized or killed just in the same fact for doing nothing but simply representing their own religion with their turban, this turban "a symbol" created within the minds of American's of terrorism. This all leads back to the original statment, the "Living by the foma(harmless untruths" that make you brave and kind, and healthy, and happy." If we feel as a country we are allow others these harmless untruths how can we persecute people for wearing a certain article that represents their own religion. So this all was very confusing as i realized it is very difficult to remember what i wrote at home in my word document that is nestled away in the data banks of my computer never posted due to the terrible memory of a high school senior

Influenced Thesis

So as the title states im under the influence of some heavy cough medication that im sure is drifting the way i think and or write. So if this stops making sense i'd suggest to stop, rewind life, and delete all of what you have read from your brain. So reading the Dartmouth thesis, and academic write sections Mr. D so gracefully posted i will continue t create something of a thesis i will hopefully be able to extend upon. Right at the beginning of this novel i had questions whirling in my head. The question i will most likely present as my thesis is; How does Huxley defines Happiness within his book Brave New World? How does this defintion reflect what he views upon the current world. How does this reflect to our world? I will extend upon these ideas amoung my own ideas and possibly combine ideas within Postmodernism for beginner to my thesis. I will also use a supplementary text that i picked up this summer From Plato to Nietzsche by E.L. Akkeb within this i will utilize the ideas of Rousseau, Descartes, Aristotle, and Kant. Other thesis's i might explore are where Huxley places our society within those that exists within the novel. Which direction does our society want to head? If Huxley has written this novel in the past as a warning to the future have we heeded this warning or whent completely against this putting into play the bush administration, reagan administration, and obama administration as well as other "first world countries" This academic essay will be slightly different from what i usually write but not necesarrily a whole change around from the preached high school essay, that is taking a side and fighting for it with dignified manner. Well now that my medicine is fully set in i will go wander the world of dreams. See you all tommorrow, you too Mr.D :)

One Grand Story.(comments would be nice,not necesarrily for this one either)long title

(this will soon be edited)Well lets start off this blog with a great big, i have no clue what to write about. So with that said i am going to "wing-it." Hopefully the ideas will flow through my fingers or bullshit will flow through them making something terrible difficult to read. Well, while we were all indulging in the Postmodernism for Beginners book I was applying Lyotards(from here on known as L, no you crazy Bleach fans not that L). Well applying L's ideas to our current day. I was noticing that many countries still use this Metanarrative aspect to steer their people into the desired direction. First example that comes to mind, would be President Obama and his health care reform. He is desperately, it seems, trying to steer the people into the direction of reform; while the counter-party trys to drastically do the opposite scare the hell out of people associating the word reform to socialism. This all is leading to the grand narrative of this american story here, well all of this would be steering the american people towards being "better off". (kinda lost track here.)On page 29 L defines metanarratives as "big stories, stories of mythic porportions." With this I will rant until the cows come home. What exactly is our metanarrative now? The overall metanarrative of America? the world? It seems to me that world wide the Metanarrative would be to become "successful", in American depending on the person it would be to have the white picket fence, two cars in garage, a wife and kids all in a suburban setting. But who creates these metanarratives? i would say the media, the past and many other things. This "success" meta narrative would sum up all of the desires and needs aroung this one thing(picket fence etc). These grand narratives are also used as propaganda in some senses, such as the Prop 8 grand narrative; Gays will take over california and eat your children, ok maybe not eat your children but turn them gay. Meta Narrative are used to define or give meaning to our lives. Some use meta narratives to guide their lives and their own morals, religion a large meta narrative a very versatile narrative that exists in some form or another in every country. In brave new world this metanarrative is somewhat smudged over, it seems to be apparent in a direction of "efficiancy" but there is no universal direction or point to why they are doing any of this. The reason of their life is just to fulfill their enacted roll, if one dies there is no problem he/she can be easily replaced.

Define Human

The many different subjects that could be explored in Brave New World, im highly tempted to use quotes from outside of 1-4 and usually boundaries never stop me but there is plenty in just 1-4 to be discussed. Again i give a warning to my few readers that my thoughts are not strctured; instead they are tons of thoughts that will spill out into this canvas that i am given to express my self on. The people of this BNW are machines. In my mind they are not humans, the human beings of the book so far have been contained to Bernard Marx, and that in the slightest word his freind Helmholtz. Even Helmholtz internally reverts back to being a machine of the BNW. This BNW has this plan that they will create these "humans" as tools they have mechanizied all of these beings into the castes having them be completely happy within their own caste not wanting more or less, constantly happy with what they have and if not given soma, on page 45 "Has any of you ever encountered an insurmountable object?" The question was awnsered by a negative silence. The simple fact of them never having problems, never experiencing sadness, grief, care, or love; the only feeling they ever will feel are those regulated by BNW that the human body necesarrily needs. Those of sexual desire, fulfillment within their class, and cerebral happiness. Now you might even ask what is human? My own perspective is that of mayn different categories i define Bernard Marx as human for he has greif, happiness, depression. These things may be seen as something to be avoided even in our world but they define the human being in the fact that these emotions are so strong as to almost control the persons minds and bodily state. Why would this government do this to their people why would they want to create machines out of humans? why would they want to destroy individuality something that seems to diversify but also decrease slowly within our own culture. The machines are more efficent for this BNW than the humans are human have feelings constant wants needs, ideals, opinions, ever changing ideas. Machines need to be greased (in this case recreational sports, obstacle golf), fueled(in this case food), and in this case kept happy( soma and the abundance of sexual pleasure. The sexual promsicuity that is endorsed is kept to make sure no human traits are born such as love and connection between two people not the sudden passion but a lasting love that will slowly develop between two people, this factors in many problems for this government divorce leads to sadness, jealousy leading to conflict possible deaths. With the destruction of love they have completely destroyed that of parent/child love that is the connect the different opinions, morals that the parents will teach to their children the next generation. Instead the government is in the role of the parent. This individuality leads to many problems for the government not efficent enough spread of workers, some not working, some dieing earlier than others. The individuality is destroyed with group sing as they are all one the same cloths the castes are all the universal person that it is better for the "community" even deaths are not morned but simply giving back to the community as the billows of ashes of dead people are simply converted into fueled later used by the inhabitants of BNW. In our culture today individuality is expanded and decreased drastically, people do take on these "castes" or "clques" even if they feel they are individuals they take on the aspects the music the culture of their "discourse" but do not expand look any further those who hate country will forever put it down and never give it a chance or those who hate "rap" will never listen to a rap song with seriousness http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LwAkavpCvA (something in sorts related to what im saying, i'd look at the lyrics a little bit closer :) you might see some funnies.)But as we are humans this is all subject to change the beauty of our culture is the flexibilty of our change we can be this today something else tommorrow. The categorizing of people within these cultures is something that is just as bad as the caste system in BNW. This is one of the lacking blogs, nt very motivated i dont feel much in this passage for some reason no real emotion maybe this machinity is passing onto me the fact that our culture expects us to be just as robotic and perfect is something of hilarity.

I want

to post a new blog but, just throwing this out there Mr. D blog is under my random blog.... It'd be niceeee if someone cared to read it :) I'd love the comments?

Plethora of Thought

So it seems i begin to use this space as a free think area, this is completely seperate and in no way with Mr. D's class(so if you expect anything more than a rant then look elsewere you expect structure one consistent thought oooh you wont find that here!)(Photograph is copyright by Rachel Marie Taylor btw). I have considered why it is we live. What is our eternal purpose. For each to their own yes? We all have reasons to live, we all have this perceived American Dream(ohh menindo you were going somewhere with all that ranting i see), we also have this capitalistic ideal of where we want to be in life. Something that is either fed in through childhood or picked up from the television. Why is it that parents want their child to achieve more than they had, is it not already perceived that the child already attains what the parents already has, for many this is obviously not the case. But if i was to tell someone at my age that my lifes goal was eventually to leave everything material behind and head to the far reaches of the earth and spend a year or so in total solitude, would i not be seen as insane or ridiculous almost a laughable? But who is this other person to laugh at my dream, what if i laugh at your "american dream" or your parents dreams i'm sure you would feel quite hurt. But is having solitude from humanity all so different is there things that do not give one satisfaction even though it happens to leave behind everything that the materialistic society represents. Why is it in our society we resent differences? As a child i didnt speak english of any sort up until the second grade where i was finally fluet, through this time my peers were generally accepting as there were many japanese, korean, and chinese student in the same boat thus i grew up learning many strange accents within my wording and to this day you can hear these strange things stick out my english switching from horrid "grammar" to something of a solid chop-chop-chop english to a british english all of these different englishes effecting me, and from what i can tell i can carry a conversation with any given english speaker fairly well. What im trying to point out with this situation is why would this be seen as such a horrible thing why is it so horrible for achild to want to grow up to be nothing more than a farmer? Do we have a right to look down on this child? How does all of this connect to overall happiness of this child, is he any less happier than the struggling college student making loans and constantly stressing to just get to the internship that awaits him in his long journey to his actual goal? And when this college student reaches his goal is he happier than the farmer? The capitalistic compelling of america, will be the next subject. Why you ask do europeans live longer? why are they smoking and still living longer? Maybe its food, health insurance plethora of different things who knows! my personal thought, my father's personal thought. the American Drive: as we say. This american drive may be a bad thing may be a good thing. Starting from the puritan work ethic it grew to what it is now. America as my dad says "24 hour buisness that never stops running even when it runs out of fuel it will run on the blood of the employees" with this it explains much of what we "opinionize" this country has stressed so much in more, more more people do not sleep, we stress, we all want nothing but more. We want bigger and better everything (not necesarrily a bad thing) we have bigger fruit because of chemicals our chicken if you compare KFC chiken in hong kong to the local chiken you will see the obvious difference in size. The cars here are gigantic compared to everything else in the world our freeways are jam packed our traffic tickets are sky scrapers in amount. We do nothing but more money more food bigger food at the fastest possible way ever. My father has lived in most countries of Europe(Finland, Germany, France, England, Norway, Sweden) everyone closes down at what time, 6 pm, people go home at what time 8pm sure they are loosing that money possibly but what exactly are they gaining are they working their fingers to the bone? Are they happy in what they have? Are they content where they are living? Are they content with their small car middle sized house and small family? Mostly yes. Obviously the nature of capitalism is just that more progress more money strive for a better future but is that the future YOU really want? In all honesty take away your parents the media the house you live in the technology everything. What is it that you REALLY want? Is it that new ipod on the market or is it something simpler like more freinds to come to your picnic(because people have picnics now a days). Really i think if we really take the influences we have from everything around us if we explore deep within ourselves you can see what it is you truley desire in life, once you have that you may actually see what your reason to living is. for anyone who has read so far i am in no way against capitalism i am in no way a dirty marxist crazy right left up or down i am simply me nothing more nothing less, i am neither deep nor shallow or am i attempting at that. I am not trying to persuade or show my horrible grammar/punctuation errors to the world. Simply writing to write.

Cultural or Secular Genocide, you choose.

After our Socratic circle experience in Mr. D's class I've motivated my self to get off facebook and write in this blog. During "Socratic interaction" i took many notes on all of your ideals and view points from this i will draw my own viewpoint, this perspective will be expressed in this little bit of data called a Blog. My viewpoint will be textually based going through the text from one interesting point to another hopefully smoothly enough to cypher into what we call the English language.

From the first statement we all knew what this article was exactly about the tug of war between church to state, left to right; secular to nonsecular, and multicultural to uni culture. This article summarized in one statement "debate over how much faith belongs in American History classrooms." My own viewpoint be it full of worth or not, from what i have heard from you all in class is something of less right or left; and maybe because of this it is so radical it should be thrown to a wind as a statement of heresy. My viewpoint being, the neither of both sides we should neither take out emphasis of the bible in history nor overly emphasis to the point of propaganda. I believe school should be a center of the most unbiased education you may get; textual education, base education; something that should be taught as a fact then gone home to the parents to where they may sway the child in the direction they feel is correct within their own culture. These radical ideas of mine may not seem all that radical but to those on the far left or far right this seems to be blasphemy, why argue when you can "meet in the middle" in joined hands to find something that is agreeable to both sides. But who is deciding this "education routine" the politicians pushing their own regime, the reverends emphasizing their own religious view, or the parents of these children? Who are we really changing when we make these decisions the power of either side or the future of man kind, the children who are learning this education? The fact that some want to de-emphasis multiculturalism is something i see as completely ridiculous and outright a "censorship" for advantage of their own past, any de-emphasis of the bible in the founding of American government is also censorship. The fact that this all boils down to the history books, is something of ridiculous, when the proportions of the actual argument is between those i have stated early in this blog. The middle ground is something that should be taken for our future, but what middle ground should we take? Those between secular and non secular, or a variety of different types? Even if we are able to take the middle ground of scores of different groups there will be millions more of individual ideas that will never be taken into account. But how will we be able to incorporate ideals within our history books without turning them in over-sized thesaurus's of pure opinion bull. Or maybe this is what we need from the texts that i have read for Academic Decathlon a much hated activity in most circles, the text was completely different opinions of different writers during the period of the subject (civil war), the both sides and generality of those in the other areas, from slaves to those gash darn hill folk. But within all of this opinion there was no "fact page" or "answer sheet" that told us within the program what exactly was right or wrong it left us the choice , the ability to choose for ourselves. Now giving children this freedom may create many different solutions these solutions may not be socially correct or testable but as of now, whether the history books are biased to one group or another eventually, by hope, the children are able to make their own decisions their own biases separate from or near to their parents or politician of choice. But while these children are formulating, thinking of their opinions they should be given at most possible a sterile history book void of opinion as much as possible for it is not the left or rights's authority to persuade children that are not of their own loins.